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Moratoriums, Roundabouts, Seafood Fest Fill City Plates

By Floyd Egner
Publisher, Tropical Breeze

Safety Harbor city commissioners are considering a moratorium on downtown developments taller than 25 feet, reconsidering roundabouts at key intersections and turning over operation of the annual Seafood festival to city staff.

November began with the decision to take over the Seafood Festival. City commissioners rejected bids from the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce and a locally owned private business, Byg Kat Entertainment. Flush from the success of the Wine Festival, city staff assured commissioners that they could organize and present the event in March, despite a short timetable.
Later in the month, a workshop on traffic calming heard from a number of residents who said that upon further reflection, maybe roundabouts could help solve some of the city’s traffic problems.

Ollie W. Myers: A Lifetime In Safety Harbor Spanned Many Eras

By Floyd Egner

Publisher, Tropical Breeze

Ollie W. Myers arrived in Safety Harbor in 1924 at the age of 12. She lived in the city the rest of her life and died in November at the age of 94 having witnessed an enormous sweep of history, her daughter Judy Myers recalled recently.

Ollie's grandmother, Fannie Milo Walton, was born in Maryland as a slave in 1858. Her family was sold in Baltimore and shipped to Monroe County, Georgia in a covered wagon in the 1860s. A hundred years later, Ollie's daughter was a high school student as Pinellas County schools were desegregated. Judy Myers was among the first black graduates of Dunedin High School in 1966. 

Photo for Tropical Breeze courtesy Judy Myers. Ollie Myers with her grandson Joshua at St. Paul AME Church in Safety Harbor.

The family's story illuminates a part of Safety Harbor's history that isn't well documented. Ollie was a housekeeper, maid and later in life worked with her husband Henry in a janitorial business. She was cook for Dr. Con Barth at his resort, Barth's Baths and Sanatorium, which was founded in 1925 and operated for more than 20 years across North Bayshore Drive from the Safety Harbor Spa. The baths eventually were purchased by the spa and the building was demolished. The site is an oak-shaded parking lot today.

Daughter Judy said she is attempting to carry on a tradition of occasional family get-togethers, trying to ensure that family members know their history and know one another. When a family reunion was held in 1993, some cousins met for the first time. "A lot of us didn't know one another," she said. Her family, however, has documented its history, which extends back to the years of slavery.

After the American Civil War, former slave Amos Milo Walton, Ollie's great-grandfather, bought 107 acres of land on Pea Ridge Road, near Bolingbroke, GA, where Ollie would be born in 1912. Today it is just off I-75 as it sweeps past Macon on the way to Atlanta. It was the family home when Amos' 14-year-old daughter Fannie married Nathaniel Williams in 1872. They raised 10 children on the Georgia farm, one of whom was Peter James Williams, Ollie's father.